


In the Dark

by AtomicPen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Modern AU, Modern Kirkwall, car crash, tw accident, tw blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicPen/pseuds/AtomicPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Doesn't matter what I tell myself</i>
  <br/>
  <i>The flame is small, but it burns it all</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Sleepless questions and some sly suggestions</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I could fly if I could only fall</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I've been wanting to touch you since we met</i>
  <br/>
  <i>You don't give a girl a chance to forget</i>
  <br/>
  <i>And all night, all night</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I've been looking for you all night</i>
  <br/>
  <i>All night, all night</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I've been looking for you all night</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> **song:[all night by sam phillips](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KOTIFp18PA)**

“Aren't you all glad we walked now, instead of taking a cab?” Maye glanced from the standstill traffic beside them on the road back to her companions.

Carver scowled at the low, dark clouds that were threatening rain all day, but as of yet had let nothing loose. “You know, it very well could have rained—still _could_ rain—and you just got lucky this time, right?”

Maye flashed her brother a bright grin. “I think you have to start calling it 'skill' instead of 'luck' the number of times I have it...”

Varric ignored them both and tilted his chin to try and see through some of the breaks in the cars, asking, “What do you suppose happened to back all this up?”

“It was just an accident,” Maye replied and shrugged, though her eyes skimmed the tops of the cars as well, falling to rest on the boxy white vehicle they were steadily drawing near.

Her tone made a frown turn down Varric's mouth. “Don't sound so concerned, Hawke. Maker forbid someone think you might care.”

She shot him a sharp look. “I _do_ care, Varric. But it's not always my place to try and help. Especially with the—well, you know.” She wiggled her fingers to illustrate her point.

“You don't even use your fingers when you cast,” Carver pointed out.

A horn blared, followed by a short bout of angry shouts traded between a few immobile drivers, and cut Maye's answer off before it began, even as she opened her mouth to retort. Wincing a bit at the noise, she tucked a wayward lock of hair behind her ear that the wind tried to pick up.

“Let's not announce that too loudly next to a line of cars full of people with nothing better to do than eavesdrop on passers-by,” she said to her brother when the shouting died down, “and just keep walking as inconspicuously as we can.”

Her eyes went back to the ambulance as they walked, her hands slipping into the pockets of her wool coat. No sirens wailed, but the lights were still flashing on it and the police cars she could not yet see. She squinted a bit.

“Does inconspicuous count as staring at the accident?” Carver grumbled.

“Oh, it'd be stranger if we _didn't_ try to see as we walked by,” she told him. Varric nodded.

“I have to agree with Hawke on this one, Junior.” At the larger man's glare, Varric shrugged. “She's got a point—terrible as it is, people like to gawk at horrible situations they aren't in.”

Much as Carver seemed annoyed, Maye and Varric were right; people walking by and those still in their cars waiting for the road to open up again were all straining to see what had happened, most with the same knitted look creasing their brows. Maye and the others were on the same side of the street as the ambulance, and they soon came to the end of the stopped cars to a perimeter created by a few police cruisers. There was an officer on the other side of the street running tape between orange cones around the entire area, while the other officers were trying to reroute traffic to get cars moving again away from the accident. Maye slowed without thinking, both Varric and Carver following suit on her flanks, all vestiges of conversation forgotten as the scene of the accident came into their view.

Maye could see three cars that looked as if they had been part of the accident, however it happened, and they were strewn across the street. On the far side from where they and the ambulance were, was a truck that only appeared to have a few dings and scratches on it, but was otherwise intact; there were two smaller cars that were much worse for the wear opposite the truck. A sleek, green coup was spun out, facing the wrong direction for the lane it occupied, with a long, deep gouge from the hood all the way to the trunk of the car, but it was the passenger's side, and it the door wasn't open. The gouge ended in a large dent that broke one of the rear tail lights of the coup, but as bad as that looked, the third car was by far the worst.

Glass littered the street between the coup and the third car, a grey sedan, as well as a scrape along the asphalt of the road itself that reflected brighter in the flashing lights of the ambulance and police cars than the rest of the road. The sedan itself was completely upside-down, both the front and back windowshields were smashed in, and the hood was partially crushed beneath the weight of the rest of the car suddenly being on top of it. She could see blood spatters and small pools of blood surrounding the sedan. EMTs in uniform worked in the back of the ambulance, hooking the patient on the stretcher within to life support. Maye squinted a little as she looked over the scene, sensing something odd about it. Nothing looked strange at first glance—just an accident to normal eyes—but there was a faint sheen around everything that she felt she could discern if she concentrated enough. A small shimmer of pale green came from within the sedan, and she sucked in a breath, realizing what it meant.

“I think there's someone still alive in there,” she heard herself murmur.

“What was that, Hawke?” Varric's voice sounded muffled and distant to her ears.

Before she had any time to respond, one of the EMTs not in the back of the ambulance swung around toward the overturned car and surged into motion toward it, ignoring the surprised shouts of his comrades. He wore no hat like the rest of them, and the blond ponytail streaming behind his shoulders as he sprinted the distance to the sedan.

Dropping down to the smashed backseat window of the car, Maye watched as he reached in and struggled with something.

“Can I get some help here?” He called out over his shoulder, but his voice was strained and no one seemed to hear him.

Without thinking, Maye reacted, leaving Varric and Carver suddenly behind and running to join the EMT at the car. The green was a little girl, she knew it now. A little girl who could touch the Fade—that was why Maye could sense her. But she wasn't going to last long, and the EMT needed help that wasn't going to make it in time if no one could heard him shout.

“Hawke, what are you—?”

“Maye—!”

She reached the sedan in only a few seconds, her heart racing from the adrenaline surge and the overwhelming need to help save the girl.

“Here let me help,” she said breathlessly to the EMT, who only spared a moment to glance at her, surprised.

“I'm too big to fit through that hole to reach her in time. You're going to have to get in further and try to reach under her and unhook her seat-belt. Can you do that?” the EMT asked, immediately taking control of the situation despite not knowing who she was or even if she was qualified to give help; there was someone who needed saving and it had to be now or it wasn't going to happen at all.

“Right,” Maye said even as she slid down on the ground to get as close as she could to the sedan's broken windows. “I think I can get inside a little bit,” she said, mostly to herself, easing her way past a large shard of glass still embedded into the car.

“Be _careful_ ,” the EMT warned, though he did not dissuade her.

“Don't worry,” she replied, her shoulders already halfway through the opening. There was a little dark-haired girl suspended by her seat belt, tears streaming down her wan, frightened face. One of her arms was covered in blood, and Maye suspected it was hers. Maye took a breath and gave her a small smile. “Hey, sweetie, you're gonna be okay. We're gonna get you out of here,” she explained. “I'm going to reach around you and unbuckle your seat belt, okay? I need you to reach above your head and break your fall, all right? Can you do that?” Maye felt the warmth of the EMT right beside her, and it served to bolster her own confidence, even as she felt the car pressing down around her.

The little girl nodded silently, then raised her hands up. Her fingertips barely scraped the roof of the car, but it would have to do.

“I'll try and catch you when I unhook the seat belt, but I don't know if I'll be fast enough, so be ready.” The little girl nodded and Maye took another short breath before she reached in further, fingers stretching to find the metal of the buckle on the other side of the the girl's body.

As she reached, her torso scraped against the remaining shards of the window, and as she found the buckle, she felt glass rip into the skin right above her left hip. Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood to keep from crying out, she kept at the buckle with fingers, now slick with sweat from the pain, but she finally managed to release the mechanism keeping the belt hooked. The little girl tumbled to the roof as her bleeding arm gave way under her weight, crying out as she fell. Maye immediately twisted again to cushion her fall, unable to properly catch her in time, feeling the glass dig deeper.

The girl fell half on her, half on the ruined roof of the car, bruised and bleeding, but still alive. Relief flooded Maye as blood soaked through her shirt and jeans.

“I got you,” she said to the little girl, her voice a pained whisper as Maye awkwardly gathered her up into her arms. “I got you, I got you.”

The girl didn't have much strength left, but she clung to Maye with what little her arms still contained, and Maye wriggled back out with her, cutting along her shoulder and arm on that same sodding piece of glass that had dug into her side to avoid hurting the little girl further. Once through the broken window, Maye collapsed on the ground with the girl on top of her. The EMT's partners had finally come over by that point—Maye assumed waved over by the one she had helped—who drew the crying girl from her arms and carried her back to the ambulance. She lie there for what felt like several moment, panting, sweat beading her forehead, staring up at the sky.

The blond EMT's face appeared in her field of vision, hovering above her. His brow was knit with concern and his eyes—a warm, honey amber, Maye thought a little feverishly—searched her face.

“You're bleeding,” he said. “Did the glass cut you? Why didn't you say anything? I could have helped.”

Was he chiding her for helping him save little girl? “You said you couldn't fit through by yourself—you couldn't have reached me or done anything, and that glass was just in the way, but I'm all right—” she babbled, and tried to push herself up onto her elbows, but that only made a knife of pain shoot through her side, and Maye swore she felt her arteries push more blood out of her. She fell back with a gasp.

“Don't try and move,” the EMT ordered firmly, leaning over her and carefully lifting her shirt from the bleeding wound. “You got cut pretty deep, ma'am.”

The last of her adrenaline wore away, finally, and more of the pain started coursing through her system, so that even breathing hurt. “Not sure... I could move... if I wanted to...” she replied through her teeth. Were those black spots in her vision? She didn't think she had lost that much blood. Yet, there were the edges of the Fade, trying to creep across her eyes. She squeezed them shut and willed the Fade away. Her guard would not falter. She couldn't let it.

Above her, she distantly heard the EMT suck in a breath. “Open your eyes, ma'am,” he ordered suddenly, his voice tense but firm. When she didn't open them, he barked, “Look at me!”

Maye's eyes flew open and found him staring at her face, jaw set as he looked at her. She found herself very aware of his cheekbones, and the way short strands of hair came loose to frame his face, and the line his jaw made against the black shoulders of his uniform. The way his honey eyes never moved from her face.

“Going unconscious is a very bad thing right now, so I need you to concentrate on me. I'm going to... heal you a little—to staunch the bleeding. It means I'm going to press down on the cut, and it's going to hurt for a moment. Try not to pass out. Focus on anything to keep yourself awake,” he explained to her. She nodded and made a little noise from her throat she intended to be a word, but that didn't quite make it to that stage.

He let out a breath, and she watched the muscles in his neck. “Okay. I'm pressing down now.” She felt slow pressure onto her side, but the pain that came from it only lasted a second before it was replaced by a warming sensation. She bit her lip again and tasted the saltiness of her blood from earlier, but found she didn't have to do much but watch his face as he worked to keep awake. In fact, it wasn't hurting much at all, and she felt her chest relax a little.

“Thought that was going to hurt more...?” she said after a moment. He didn't look up at her, speaking while he focused on her wound.

“Well, this is my job, after all. Better to be prepared for the worst and do your best, right?” The pain had subsided enough that she felt his fingers brushing against the skin around the wound and felt herself blush despite everything. It was just her nerves working overtime to compensate for the cut, she told herself. Hypersensitive to everything, and nothing to do with how handsome the EMT touching her was.

Maye swallowed and concentrated on her breathing instead. The warmth came again, spreading all the way up her side and down the arm that had also been cut, and she glanced over at his face again. A calm came over her as she watched him, seeing the faint sheen of green reflect against his cheekbones and eyes, and she realized exactly what he was doing. She felt her heart race a little as her eyes darted back up to the sky while he finished stopping the bleeding. What he did was a dangerous gamble—he couldn't know if she would report him to the Order or not for using healing magic on her. Hiding in plain sight, chancing that saving a person's life and helping them would outweigh them turning him in.

Then again, most people might not know he was using magic on them to heal—most people weren't as directly connected to the Fade as she was.

“What's your name?” she heard herself ask him, sounding calmer and less in pain than she felt, though the latter was fading more to an ache than something acute by now.

“Anders,” he replied without hesitation. He stole a glance away from her wound to her face. “You shouldn't have crossed the line into the scene of the accident.”

She managed a wan smile. “Glad I did.”

He smiled back at her, eyes warming to almost a liquid amber. “So am I.” As if remembering himself, he quickly looked away and reached to his belt, pulling a disinfectant wipe from its holder there. It was cool against her skin as he wiped the excess blood away.

“There, that seems to have helped,” he said, still not looking at her. “It's clean and the blood's stopped.” He put the cloth down and pulled out gauze and bandage strips from another container on his belt, and set about covering the wound. She had felt his touch to the Fade, however, and suspected the bandage was mostly for show than anything else. She would be surprised if it left anything more than a faint scar—he couldn't use his full power on patients, of course, because that would draw too much attention, too much suspicion, so there would have to be a scar left from something that cut her as deeply as the glass felt like it did.

“Thank you,” she said, able to push herself up on her elbows now with minimal pain. “And I'm glad I was nearby enough to help. And small enough.”

That pulled a soft chuckle from his throat as he rocked back on his heels beside her. “Yes, the burden of a man's shoulders in situations like that.” The amused light in his eyes fell into seriousness again. “I am sorry you got hurt in the process, though.”

Maye reached up and brushed the loose hair sticking to her forehead out of her face. “Don't be. I was glad to help. Glad to be in time.” Her gaze slid over to the ambulance and the EMTs working there. “I hope it was in time, anyway...”

Anders nodded. “I think it was,” he said, confidence threaded through his tone. He offered her a his hand to help her to her feet, and she took it gladly.

He drew her up smoothly, the warmth of his hand enveloping hers and she wondered how much of that was normal and how much of it was leftover from his healing magic. Before he let go of her, Maye sent a small surge of energy through her fingertips to his, just subtle enough to be felt across his skin, and heard his sharp intake of breath, saw the sudden widening of his eyes.

“Thank you, again,” she breathed before he could ask her anything, then drew her fingers from his grip as she nodded to the two police deputies walking their way. They would question her and him about what happened, and neither of them would give the other away.

They allowed her to leave the scene a few minutes later, after ensuring they had all she knew and that Anders was sure she was well enough to not need further medical attention. He told them she only had a minor scratch along her side and arm, but that neither had gone deep enough to cause concern. She did nothing to refute his statement, though she did look back at him over her shoulder as she left to rejoin Carver and Varric, seeing him watch her go with an indiscernible expression. He held the fingers she had touched with her energy carefully, almost as if he was trying to decide if he had imagined that part or not.

She gave him a smile that told him he hadn't, then turned to face Varric's concerned questions and her brother's worried gruffness.

"So much for 'not always your place to help', huh, Hawke?"


End file.
